The Natural Sissy

Broken

"You really do look very pretty, you know?" Amelia said as she took yet another photograph of me. She was sitting on the sofa in our lounge, whilst I perched uneasily on the edge of the big armchair mum usually sat in, trying not to cry anymore. Mum and Auntie Barbara were in the kitchen, gossiping and making tea for all of us. "If I didn't know better, I would think you were a girl...a sweet little girl?"

"You're really loving this, aren't you?" I muttered, chewing on my bottom lip.

"Manners, Sebastian?" She snapped, with a big grin on her face. "Mummy would not like it if you are rude?"

"Sorry...Auntie Amelia."

"The picture of you in your first dress has two hundred likes already on Instagram...and your school uniform and pushchair pose has even more?" She giggled, her eyes flicking from me to her screen, enjoying tormenting me. Mum had let her undress me in the kitchen, after giving me my pacifier again to stop my desperate protestations and completely ignoring my floods of tears. Then she removed my clean nappy herself and took me into the downstairs loo to make me comfortable, as she put it. I had to sit down to pee, like a girl, and then she wiped me with a tissue. I was not allowed to do anything for myself. After that, it was time to dress me, and I knew what that would mean, of course. Petticoated boys wear dresses. It is like the damned law or something for the freaks who believe in such nonsense. Freaks like my dear mother, it seemed, because she was following all the rules. "Sweet Sebastian in his pink sailor dress and white wooly tights...and those adorable pink Mary Janes...I just wish I could show them your frilly knickers...but I am too mature to do that...and you just stood there and let us dress you up...didn't you? Like a living doll...it was hilarious?"

"I don't want to be spanked...or kept in nappies, Auntie Amelia?" I whispered piteously.

"And all those tears...so much for big boys don't cry?" She laughed, finally putting the phone down and concentrating all of her attention on me. "I mean, I never actually believed that this petticoating lark would work...but you're truly pathetic...I bet those stupid losers who got you into this mess are pissing themselves?"

"Thanks to you sharing those pictures...Auntie Amelia...I thought you were my friend?" I complained, but politely. I really did not want to get into any trouble. I did not want to make things any worse than they already were. Not that I could see how that would ever be possible at that moment in time.

"Yeah, so did I...until you dropped me like a stone when you got into your little gang...and I told you that they would get you into trouble, didn't I?"

"Yes, Auntie Amelia," I admitted, reluctantly. Looking back on it all, I suppose I had sort of dumped Amelia when I started hanging out with the bad lads from the estate. We used to walk too and from school with each other, and muck around together more or less all the time. It was not a boyfriend and girlfriend situation, although Amelia was drop dead gorgeous, because we had known each other as long as either of us could remember. Mum had pictures of me as a very little baby lying with Amelia on a mat, before she could walk or talk, with her arms wrapped around me like she was holding me, so we were more like brother and big sister than anything else. But things had started to change when we moved up to big school, and she had warned me that my new mates were troublemaking idiots. I had resented her view and ignored her advice, which certainly suggested that she was the mature one, and that I was a total bloody fool for not listening to her.

"And now...you are...something else...and it's weird, and I don't understand you...but your mum says it will help you grow up to be a much better man?" Amelia said, frowning at me as she looked me up and down. The dress was horrible. It was not the sort of thing that she would ever wear, because it was childish and impossibly girlie. Amelia was no tomboy, and she liked to look nice, but my pale pink sailor dress was really not her style. "Your mum lent us some information on petticoating...Mum wanted to read it and she showed me...and I've looked at the Burnham website...so, I think I understand what she is trying to do with you...but I never thought that you would just roll over and accept it like this? I thought you would run away from that school...and I never thought you would arrive back here in that pushchair, sucking on your dummy?"